Assignment #9 - Andrea Dubon - Sun Tzu

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting" While it's been a while since i last bothered to touch, let alone read,"The art of war" philosophies like this one have stuck we me. In my interpretation of sun tzu's idea i think that war and violence don't necessarily have to go hand in hand. Is there a time for war, yeah definitely, i think that there are always going to points in time were people (or countries) simply go too far and they should be resolved. HOWEVER i also think that their should be limitations to what we allow in wars (yes i get that war will always involve fighting but it should have some humane boundaries), cause our past attempts at this , like the international humanitarian laws from the Geneva convention, aren't always enforced or even enough of a boundary. Is war morally right? probably not, but it in our current climates it's inevitable among people and their will always be endless causes for war in the future ( justifiable or not,*cough*the football war). In the natural laws that civilizations partake in between governments and people i do think that to a certain extent countries do have a responsibility to go to war if the safety of their citizens is in jeopardy. First off i personally don't see many good reasons to go to war (in it's general definition, give me a sec cause i have a different version) but in the case that an overwhelming percent of a country's population feel it necessary i think that anyone who votes to go to war should be required to enlist, cause if it's such a serious cause to you then you should have to back it up not to mention you'd be dragging a whole country into a war climate so you should at least pay your do's. Personally i think that war as a whole should be redefined because as time has gone on it's been a reoccurring trend for war to extend far past it's original cause and do, occasionally, irreversible (or at least really hard to remove) damage to countries worldwide. If anything we should revert to petty tactics like cutting countries out of trade deals or as a last resort public humiliation of nations through the media( like that movie the interview). Tactics like total war or the scorched earth policy should be absolutely unacceptable. "strategies" like these are purely barbaric and cause much more damage than any dispute could ever cause for. Tactics that extend to disrupt or injure the lives of citizens, not involved int he conflict, should not be made a norm. Citizen attacks like the bombing of Hiroshima produce apocalyptic threats to the innocent citizens not involved in the proceedings of their governments, not to mention that, despite the peace treaties now in place, still have lasting effects in the populations such desecration of the natural environment along with birth defects lasting in even present generations. Lastly if not for the moral reasons then warfare should be regulated at least for selfish ones like nuclear warfare being horrible for the environment. Overall war (as is presently defined) is wack and the whole populations of countries involved should have to suffer the consequences for the decisions of the minority in power.